the Final Prank
by Kuroshi44
Summary: is on us. The twins played a trick, and now the only one left is paying the price. T for things from Canon and my inability to tell what is a minor suggestive adult theme is. Hinted same sex relationship but nothing happens.


**AN: Don't own Harry Potter, there are over 700 thousand stories and I haven't read them all so if this is similar to something already written let me know so I can read it and take this one down.**

 **Not canon, probably, the ending at least is non-epilogue or last chapter compliant.**

The red-haired twin moved silently away from the crowds, his heart in pieces and half of his soul dead. He needed out, he needed to get away from all the people whispering consolations and muttering lamentations.

 _Stop_ , he wanted to shout, _stop saying that name, stop mourning my death when I'm standing right here._

His family was the worst. Watching his brother scream his name and crying his grief when once again they _had the wrong twin_ , and it was all his fault. He couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't wait patiently when they couldn't even mourn the right person, listening to them cry over his death while the real one who would never return remained unlamented.

It had been so simple, something they had done a thousand times before. Two out of seven identical parts when they were near indistinguishable to begin with. Along with all the joking they had done with Mad-Eye just before the flight no one had noticed when once again they traded places, when George had gone with their father and he'd gone with Remus. After so many years taking each other's places it was almost habit.

And this time wouldn't have been any different, if he hadn't gone and gotten his bloody ear blown off.

Suddenly people could tell them apart, suddenly there was a "Fred" and a "George" were before there was simply "Fred and George", and even that wouldn't have mattered if they hadn't once again been messing around, if it wasn't once again _the bloody wrong way round_ but this time with no easy way to correct them. With Mad-Eye dead they couldn't tell them that even in the middle of battle they had been playing a prank, that they had taken some of his last words literally, disobeyed the old Grouch on some of the final orders he gave. And time passed, and it just got harder to bring it up.

So, they ended up switched permanently. Fred became George and George became Fred as "Fred and George" became something of a distant memory. They knew who they were, and at the time that had seemed like all that mattered, nothing had really changed except people now had a legitimate reason for never getting it the right way around.

He could never have guessed that one of them wouldn't make it, couldn't have imagined just how painful it would be to know that you would forever be called the wrong name while his other half lay dead, his true name ungrieved and personality completely disregarded. To hear his own name cried in pain as he was slowly killed off and forced into a different shape that was so similar and yet not quite.

'Fred,' that name he now hated once again floating through the air dragged him out of his thoughts. 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I know it probably doesn't mean much, but … I'm sorry.'

He turned around to see Harry Potter, the boy who lived to refuse to die. The person who, just sometimes, he and George had suspected hid his true self the same way they did with their constant shifting of names. No one could tell them apart, no one knew who Harry was behind the fame and lies the newspapers sprouted.

The person who had, slowly, claimed half of the soul he and his twin had shared. The one who, when he had allowed them all to think he was dead, had made him wonder if maybe he should just lie in the grave with them since his soul was already gone.

'Hey, Harry, shouldn't you be celebrating with everyone else,' his smile probably looked as fake as it felt. 'It does mean something, you really have no reason to apologise but it does mean something.'

Harry just kept standing there, looking somewhere between awkward and crushed with grief while something twisted in his gut and made him feel sick. Actually, he looked incredibly similar to how Fred felt. 'I kinda just want to be alone at the moment. I need to process what's going on at the moment and I couldn't do that in there, but you need to hang around with everyone, celebrate your victory and all that.'

'It doesn't really feel like a victory at the moment, Fred.' Again with that name, but it finally clicked that Harry wasn't saying it the same way everyone else was.

And he couldn't help the sarcastic and painfilled smile that took up his face as for the first time someone got it right and he had to tell them they were wrong. 'Only one twin left, Harry, and you still can't tell us apart.'

And now Harry was smiling a smile just as pained as his own but far less sarcastic. 'No, Fred, I can tell you apart just fine. You don't have to pretend when it hurts you this much, I already know.'

He couldn't breathe, the air in the hall he had left to find seemed to have all disappeared with those few words. Nineteen years and even their own mother still couldn't tell them apart, and here was this person, the one person they had wanted to be able to _tell_ so badly, announcing that he _knew_ , had _known_ , and wasn't mourning the living or forgetting the dead.

'How … when … I mean …' he didn't even know what he was trying to ask anymore.

Harry shrugged, the pained shrug of person so tired that their body _aches_. 'I don't know, I could see you two were different from each other the first time we met when you helped me onto the train, could tell I liked you from about then too.' Fred felt like he had been punched in the gut. 'I knew for certain which name belonged to which twin sometime before you thought it was a good idea to march me around as the "Heir of Slytherin" in second year.'

'You never … you never called us out on all the times we messed around?'

That same stiff shrug and that face so full of pain. 'I didn't think you wanted me to. I was just some kid the same age as your younger brother, the person you had to rescue from his own house. I didn't think you would appreciate an outsider proving he knew you better than your own family.

'Guess it doesn't matter now, I just … I just wanted you to know that I knew, that I knew who you were, and you could talk to me, be yourself and not try to be something else for someone else who never really bothered to know either of you.'

He was choking, or was he crying? He couldn't really tell, and it sort of felt like both of them combined into the most painful thing he had ever felt. 'It hurts, Harry, it hurts so bad and I don't know what to do. I can't tell them that we tricked them, I can't tell them that I'm not him and they just keep saying my name and I can't answer and tell them that I'm standing right here.'

It was silent for a while, and then Harry was once again talking in a quite voice. 'They want me to marry Ginny. No one says it but it's what Ron, Hermione, your mum, and even Ginny seem to think I'm going to do. They want me to be happy he's dead and move on with life, they don't seem to get that while he can't take any more he's already taken _so bloody much,_ and I can't get it back. They don't seem to understand that by the time those final spells were said this side had ended up taking almost as much as he ever did, and they just seem to keep taking the longer I'm around them. They want me to marry Ginny and I _can't_ , I was never in love with her, I could never _be_ in love with her.'

Fred could see the streams of tears running down Harry's face, tried to ignore just how blurry his own vision was, because they both knew that no matter what the world seemed to think, and recent events appeared to prove, Harry Potter was just a teenager that everyone continued to demand too bloody much from.

Silence, a hesitation, and a spark of determination was all the warning Fred got before Harry was talking again. 'We could leave. I'm seventeen, we could run away and just be _us_ for once in our lives. I could just be Harry and you could just be Fred. We could actually _mourn_ George instead of pretending everything is something it's not. I could empty my vault and you could pack up the shop and all _three_ of us could go somewhere else, a different country, were none of us have to pretend to be something we're not and we could remember George for who he _was_ instead of who people seemed to think he should be.'

Fred knew he was sobbing now as Harry slowly walked towards him like he was some scared animal, the sound filling the forgotten and dusty hallway that seemed like just the perfect representation of who he really once was.

'You say you never loved Ginny, but was there really no one else? Can you honestly tell me there is no one you're leaving your heart behind with here, while the two off us run off together?' He needs to say something, something to get the image out of head because the idea is just too _tempting_ when all that may have once held him here is either gone or tainted.

Another pain filled smile that contradicted everything a smile should ever stand for. 'I have only ever loved two people in my life, one of them died today.

'I loved a person who was wild as the wind and just as impossible to tame, and I loved the only person who ever seemed to hold them back when they needed to be. I loved someone who could turn even the worst thing in the world into a bearable prank, and the person who reminded them that sometimes you need to be serious. I have only ever loved two very different halves of a whole, and us running away is the only way I will ever be able to be with them.'

And Fred couldn't help it, he closed the now oh-so small gap between the two of them and held the boy, no, man now even if he was still small, in his arms where hopefully no one could take him away ever again. As Harry had said, both of them had lost so much, was it really so wrong for choosing to try and keep the only one they had left?

He's shaking and sobbing, and Harry is to, and Fred may have said yes but he honestly doesn't know.

Finally, they're both calm enough to talk, calm enough to plan.

'If we do this, if we run, how exactly do you intend this to work other than just emptying a vault? When exactly can we run?' Because he doesn't think that he can handle so much as another second listening to people telling him they're sorry that he's dead.

'Now, Luna distracted them so that I could get away from all the attention. I've been planning something like this since the third time Dumbledore sent me back to the Dursleys. I ordered an international portkey from Gringotts the day after I turned Seventeen.' The "Dursleys" was spoken like a curse and Fred had to agree, he remembered all too well the bars on the window and bones sticking out of too big cloths.

'No one to say goodbye to?'

'Said goodbye to those that needed it when I realised that Dumbledore had set me up to make sure I died during the battle. What about you?'

Fred felt his head spin with the amount of information from that one sentence that the idea of _them_ telling "George" goodbye while trying to talk him out of it made him feel sick. 'No one, I'll find another country to send them a letter from when I know they won't be able to drag me back.'

A single nod and they were gone. 

When people finally realised that Harry Potter was missing there was panic, it was during the hours of searching that Weasleys finally realised that George had never come back after leaving to find space. Worry, grief, and just the slightest bit of hatred filled the heart of Molly Weasley as she was forced to come to terms with the fact that the war had not cost her one son but three.

As Everyone rushed around, and Hermione and Ron screamed and cried at their perceived betrayal, Luna Lovegood stood back and smiled, once again knowing a truth that no one else was ready to accept.

Days passed and turned into weeks and months and the Articles in the papers slowly vanished as people focused more on rebuilding their own lives than trying to harass a hero that didn't want to be found, until only those that had been really close with "Harry Potter" mourned as they were forced to accept that the boy really was no more.

And time passed, for everyone, no matter where they were. Thousands of miles away two people built a life around a broken one, tried to carve out just a little bit of peace when they nearly always woke at night to the others screams, learned to be themselves only after they had died inside.

In a different magic community a small joke shop sprung up, a place that was filled with laughter and light and spoke of the ability to move on and live even when it was the last thing that you felt like doing. Some people found it strange that a _Joke_ shop had been set up as a memorial to a person who seemed to have been one of the original founders; but as the owners explained, those that are are forced to leave you behind wouldn't want their loved ones to suffer, and for a person that had built a life out of fun it was only right to remember him this way.

Fred knew that they hadn't, and probably never could, move on from the war and the people they had lost to it. He knew they probably drank too much to be healthy and that the cracks hadn't really healed and probably never would, even all these years later. He knew Harry still didn't quite understand what it meant to be loved by someone and would probably never trust anyone again, even him, not to betray him in some way or vanish in the morning light like a good dream, something temporary.

But they had each other, and they had the memory of George and the ability to mourn him like they should have been able to from the beginning. When one of them went too far there was someone to pull them back, when one of them broke they had the other to put them back together again, when everything got to much there were two of them to help carry the third.

They weren't okay, and both of them knew that. but for the first time in their lives they could try and be who they _were_ rather than who everyone wanted, expected, them to be. For once they were "Harry" and "Fred" rather than something that they had been told they should be.

And five years after that war had ended, Fred breathed in for what felt like the first time in his life and looked at the green-eyed man he lived with and thought maybe, just maybe, he could hope.

Because they were together, the three of them, and that was all that had ever mattered.


End file.
